I finally got my blood work done...the blood work that I should have had done in July. *ahem* I"m getting the cholesterol, the hba1c, and this time, a test for rheumatoid factor for the arthritis. The PA looked at my knuckles and said she could see a nodule on my middle finger, but in looking at both my middle fingers, they match, so I think that it's just how I look. My rings are tighter though and the aching some days is exhausting, and my hands are swollen, much like my mother's used to be. Apparently, there are new drugs that can stop the progression of the disease, so if that's the case, I'll take that, but only if I have rheumatoid versus osteo arthritis.

It sucks to be in a position to be wishing I have rheumatoid versus osteo arthritis, frankly.

I sent packages out and while all my relatives got cards, none of my friends did. My rolodex is on my computer and with all the brown outs, I couldn't run the computer to get my rolodex. I sent a box to my mom and one to Betty, but I forgot to put in relish, but didn't know if she was a relish person or not, so wasn't sure if I should torture her or not. I did include some organic yummies in there, so she'll still love me. Additionally, I got an awesome box from Harsh Betty -- chile pepper stuff like crazy and really neat goodies. I think my favorite thing was the homemade Christmas tree ornament. I didn't send her an xmas tree ornament, so I suck, but on the up side, I also swallow, which just goes to blow ya that a Merry Christmas can be had by all.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and have a great new year!

It was a rough weekend with the weather we had. There was terrible terrible wind here. We were without power for 10 hours in the middle of a blizzard on Saturday evening. I drove in sleet to Kmart to lay in supplies and when I drove back it was snowing heavily. Mike had the fire going full blast and cooked sausages on shish kabob sticks for the kids. I stopped at McD's on the way back and bought a cheeseburger for me, as well as $100 worth of foods-we-could-stick-in-the-garage-to-keep-cold, hot dog buns, batteries, water, and a lantern/flashlight. When I came home, I hauled in an armful of wood for the fireplace. I've decided that if we buy a house around here, we are getting one with a backup heating source for winter.

Genny hadn't been feeling better and we took her to the urgent care on Saturday and she had a temp of 104.9 when I took her in. They gave her ibuprofen and checked her ears and low and behold, she had double ear infections again. I went to an ENT on Tuesday and he said that if she gets another ear infection in the next few weeks that yes, tubes would probably be warranted. Ladawn and I have been concerned about her speech and now, the recurring ear infections of late have been making me worry. We have an audiology appointment after xmas and a followup with the ENT.

And it's official, I'm going to experiment with grad school and a substitute credential. I'm talking to profs at the local university about obtaining a special education credential and then following that up with an ESL credential.

It's starting to snow AGAIN. Winterwonderland, my ass. You try shoveling this crap and it gets old fast.

I keep thinking though as I drive by the mountains and see the ever growing heaps of snow all around us, that there's a poem in it, but then again, I could just be suffering from cabin fever or insanity.

We saw the sun yesterday and I felt like a crack whore in need of a fix. It was 40 degrees or colder all day, and I was tempted to tear off all my clothes and dance naked through the snow just to get some sunshine on my body. I suppose when the horrified neighbors came over to ask me to please clothe myself because while the sun was blinding enough reflecting off the snow and they didn't need to see my bright white naked ass prancing about, I'd have had to forego my worship of the sun god and go back to my boring mediocre monotheistic existence, but it was kind of tempting. (Darn that jealous God thing!) Speaking of God, I saw my old priest at Costco today and then realized how much I miss my church and how I'm going to kick my husband's big fat butt out of bed on Sunday and we're going. It's not all his fault. I like sleeping, too, but I really want to go to church. I've missed counting off the advent sundays and the lighting of the advent candles -- a lot. We have an advent calendar, but we haven't been cruising the bible as much as I would like.

Why oh why did I look outside? What am I, some kind of sick masochist? It's snowing a-freakin-gain. There's also wind. I looked down south to these two big peaks and they were just aswirl with wind and snow. This doesn't bode well for this incoming storm. I guess the snow blown all over the roads again should have tipped me off some, too. Aw, sheee-it, now the snow is blowing off the roof, too! What sucks is that it's only December. We still have 5 more months to go of winter and already, I'm sick to death of it. Mostly, I'm just hating the cold because I have a hard time keeping warm. With my feet so dry though, I am enjoying the warmth of wool socks, though feeling like a creaky grandma regarding drafts. If there's even a mild draft from anywhere, I can find it. It creeps down my neck like dry snow and slithers down my back and settles against my spine like a leech to suck me dry of warmth.

I have to go brave the office depot in the next town to send my folks their box ups 2nd day. Maybe I'll wait for the hubbins to come home and we'll eat out, being that I forgot to put in the roast. :)

Russell had the scaries last night. He came in at 5AM and crawled into bed with me, claiming that he'd heard footsteps outside. Mike went out and verified that there was nothing and that it was just the rain dropping heavily from the eaves. We're having a big storm with a lot of wind, so it makes the house sound creepy. As everyone's favorite neighborhood insomniac, I had been awake since 430AM, so it was okay to see him. Of course, him getting up, got Genny up, so I had to send her to the grumpy mo0se on the other side of the bed to get help putting her sleeper back on.

When Russell just asked if everyone could sleep together, mo0se groused on the other side of the bed and growled that everyone was to return to their own beds. He made Genny bawl her head off, so he had to get up and comfort her and tuck her in. Russell asked to keep his door open, we said that was fine, but to close our door (so our alarm didn't wake up everyone at 615. Mike will sleep through the alarm, however, that's what gets me up.

Genny, I'd expected to see because she had her flu shot yesterday and was running a bit of a fever last night and she was content to curl up on Daddy's lap, while Russell played video games.

This morning, I got a relief -- I got "terminated." When the shit hit the fan at Thanksgiving with recent events, I was sorely wishing I didn't have to work and with as little as I've been sleeping, my customer service skills were certainly less than stellar, I'm sure. They apologized profusely for having to let me go, but I talked to my boss afterwards and told her all the stuff that had been going on and she said she was glad that I could stay home and take care of kids. I am, too. They both said that if they heard of stuff, they'd let me know, but with all state budgets as tight as they are, I am not expecting much. I keep thinking I should be upset, but I'm not. The biggest problem is when we discovered that Mike had a huge raise it was after I'd already made the commitment to work.

I have been tossing around substitute teaching, and I think I'm going to stop tossing it and start doing it. I have my CBEST from years ago, which still should be valid. I have to pay for my fingerprinting, but once it's done, it's done. I can choose my hours, go to school part-time, work part-time or stay home with the kids for the time being until Russell calms down. I don't know what I want to do, but for now, I'm planning on a quiet holiday. I'll start putting things together for the sub credential and then try it for a bit and then see if I want to add anything more to the mix. I'm also going to talk to this place that does skills evaluation and helps you find your niche in the world. I feel so lost lately, so this would be a good thing for me to do.

I woke up at 330AM sneezing in my sleep with my nose running like a sieve. I got up and took sudafed and crawled back into bed.
I am taking my sudafed, and have started to bulk up on my asthma meds. I just hope I don't end up on prednisone, and thus, insulin because I don't want to have to take insulin and syringes with me to work. It freaks people out a lot. Hell, it freaks me out.

I also hope I don't drip snot inadvertently on someone while I'm helping them with their computer, as that would be just icky. I already had a snot slip up once this morning, when I bent over to get a spoon in the kitchen. As I bent over I could feel an un-snivelable steam of snot go slipping willy-nilly out my nostril. You know you're in trouble when you've got snot leaving your body involuntarily.

And last night, we had the family conference about my new work schedule in January. We talked about how my hours would change and that I'd be working 9-6 or 10-7, daily and that that would mean that we'd have to work as a team together to make things work. We also talked about the fact that the more overtime I get to work, the more money we can put against a house and the more likely it is that we can stay where we are and not move Bear out of his school.

We're talking serious incentive here. We all agreed that we'd just keep telling ourselves that it was for the house and we could all hang in there for six months, if we knew at the end we could buy a house in the town where we are and not have to move elsewhere. I offered to print out a picture of a house, so we could keep the goal in mind, but everyone was positively drooling over the idea, so I think we'll just use it as our family mantra until my session time is up.

I think I've done everything I can towards our safety. I've done all the physical stuff and I'm praying. I pray that God chooses to keep us safe because we've done all the sensible footwork in the interim.

Bruno and I met last night, and I felt more empowered as a result. And that's a good thing. Work's been busy, so I don't have time to dwell on how scared I feel, thankfully.

I love my husband, my kids, my family, and I'm just counting each daily blessing as I go. I got to have lunch with Genny and Daddy today. I got to make Russell laugh this morning, after he'd had a complete meltdown. I got to eat a BLT for lunch, which is a guilty pleasure. We're broke again, but most of the bills are paid, so I don't care. If I got the check I'm supposed to for the contract work, we'd be in much better shape!

I found out yesterday that I can put our address on a hazard watch, so if we call 911, they'll automatically send out a sheriff. And Russell and I had a conversation about him being scared in which I said, it wasn't likely that we'd see him, but it was possible, so therefore, we had to warn him. He wasn't totally thrilled with that, but it seemed more comforting to him, so it was a start.

Genny cut up two of the squares I'd done the night before, so I spent hours last night trying to redo them and I ended up with three squares, one of which was correct, the other two had fabric faced in the wrong direction, so I'll have to pull them apart and redo them again. *the sound of hair being ripped from a scalp*

I should have just quilted the other quilt, but I was really mad about her wrecking these squares, so I just started redoing them. Of course, the fact that I couldn't find yet another spool of cream colored expensive quilting thread probably contributed to me not quilting and continuing to struggle valiantly with the square directions. I am thinking I might just blow off the original idea and put the non-directional fabric in the crucial directional location, so that I can ignore its direction. I could use the blocks I have, I am sure and just slip them in there and then go the easier route for the rest of the quilt.

I am totally blowing off making the dress until after Christmas. For $15, I bought a pretty velour dress at JC Penney outlet that should do fine for the Christmas party this weekend. I could just wear last year's dress, but a pretty princess dress doesn't work at a Speakeasy party theme thing as well as velour could. Mind you, I'm not titless enough to wear a flapper dress, so I'm not going to try. I do have a super long string of faux pearls I can wear that will work toward that thematic thing and then I've got a dress I can use a million times through the winter and it's purple, which next to most shades of teal, is up there amongst my favorite colors.

Speaking of purple...

I told Mike I wanted a purple hat and he got me one, but it was not what I wanted because it wouldn't stay on my head and then had this long tassle coming off it with heavy beads. Never mind that it just was something I'd never wear, though if it'd stay on my head, I'd keep it, but mostly, it wasn't functional. It had no means of remaning on my head because of how it was knitted and then the heavy bead tassle would have either been pulling it off my head or thwacking me upside the head as I walked, neither of which would be cool. He got it because it had won a prize and with all the beads, he thought I'd like it. If it hadn't cost $70, I'd have kept it and been quiet, but he had to tell me how much it cost because I'm the bills person and I just said, it wasn't worth it to keep it for that much money because it wouldn't do what I needed which was to keep my head warm. Then I felt like a big awful bitch because he'd tried, but he didn't seem upset about it and said for the money, I should get what I want.

I have a very cool husband.

Nightmares abound in our house.

I have been having this one where a strange balding man with longish blonde hair and bulging blue eyes shows up at our door and he's grinning through the window and I smile back thinking to myself,"What does this redneck want?" As I get to the door, I realize that Mike's dad is with this man and I simply couldn't see him through the curtain and shadows at the door. I tell Mike,"Call 911!" and my whole body goes into fight or flight mode. Invariably, I wake up shaking and terrified.

I always get up, pee, and check the kids and shuffle back to bed, where I toss and turn until I have to wake up for work. We've told daycares, the school, and our employers. We are doing everything to protect the kids. We had the stranger danger conversation with Russell. He's scared, but he knows what to say if he's alone for some reason. There have been two times this fall where he didn't listen to the instructions and he didn't go to daycare like he should and he was home alone. He had the good sense to call Mike at his number on the fridge and Mike came home and stayed with him, so all told he was only alone for 20 minutes, but it sure scared the crap out of us. So we told him what to do, if someone called. We told him to tell them that we were out in the garage working on something and to take a message and we'd call them back.

Last night, I went and saw The Santa Clause 2 with my friend, Mel. It was a cute movie, but it meant missing the kids goodnight rituals. Neither of them slept well. Mike said Genny got up until 10 looking for me. At 11, Russell came out claiming he needed a drink of water, which is something he never does. He saw me there and said hi and went back to bed.

Mike and I were in bed, having our nightly good night giggle and snuggles, including something where he said he wanted to rub my butt and I told him he could rub my feet because they were ice cubes. He claimed that wasn't possible and then I put my icicles on his thighs whereupon he cussed and covered them up to warm them up and we were both giggling. Enter Russell sobbing and telling us between tears he wasn't sleeping because he was having nightmares. I lifted up the blankets and had him get into bed with me and cuddled him. He told me that a man shot him. Wow.

So, I had Mike get up and lock all the doors, I told Russell to ask God to keep him safe and let him sleep, and most of all, I told him I love him.

I'm seeing Bruno on Wednesday and I told him I needed help formulating a plan of safety.

I think I might be brewing a strong cup of depression -- not sleeping and not interested in sex are good indicators of that. And the sex is totally unrelated to Mike. I just don't care. Even if I get to caring, the strength of my response is pretty luke warm. And to get me to care, Mike has to do cartwheels, which hardly seems fair to him. It's also not fair to me because I have to sort of force a reaction, kind of like you would if you walked into a surprise party that you already knew about.

Part of it, I realize, is that I haven't been working out much in the past week or so and LaDawn has asked to put our exercising activities on hold until January. I asked Mike if he would mind dealing with kids alone three days a week, so I could get to the pool and work out. He said yeah, but I know it's going to suck for all concerned. He's such a grumpy bear in the mornings and the kids are a handful, even with both of us there, but if I don't do this, I'm going to feel like shit and my sugars will go to shit. I can already tell I've put on some extra belly in the past couple weeks, so this is not good.

But the sex is something else. I don't know if I should be rabidly reading a Cosmo for cool ways to spice up my love life or just running to my nearest mental health professional.

I called Bruno, as he helped us with Russell. I know I've been feeling really overwhelmed and ambivalent about being a stay-at-home mom and even about working, so I need some help sorting this stuff out. I'm sure that insecurity I'm feeling about what I want to be when I grow up is playing a role in this, too, but I'm not feeling okay and I don't know why.

I have been really contending with my age lately and that's been difficult for some reason, too. I've also not been to church since Easter, which I miss terribly. I just feel full of regrets and grief lately and I am not sure where it's all coming from.

Today, I've been singing "Java." I got a good night's sleep, and I didn't have to do kids today, so I was just so destressed.

I love coffee, I love tea. I love the Java Bug and it loves me.

I figured out the books today and the more amazing news for the year is that we should have all of our credit cards paid by the end of February. Yesterday, I got all cocky and filled out one of those mortgage things online. I was just curious...can we actually qualify if we have a buttload of credit cards paid off and we have nothing but a car payment and student loans. Of course, between us, we have three-fourths of a house in student loans.

We'll see if curiosity kills the dream.

And the sick baby is home. She was home for Thanksgiving, I believe. I have been quilting madly to get the hand stuff done and hopefully will have it all pat by the weekend. I'm also piecing a quilt for a co-worker. I do some piecing, take a break and then quilt the other one.

I know, I know. I swore I'd never piece again, but I got this good idea and I made my own design and picked out the coolest fabrics and I just don't know what the hell I was thinking, but I sure do enjoy it a lot more when I'm doing it for myself and not some ungodly deadly for nazi quilt teachers. I'm also finding that the cutting is so much better now -- I do it as I need it and I am a lot more accurate. Practice makes Perfect.

I do enjoy hand quilting, but I feel rather inept at it and I really desperately need a smaller loom to work on for my short arms.

I just wish I had a lot more time. I'm so short on it lately.

I just figured out our percentage of debt versus credit offered and while right now it's 70%, we're getting this big fat check next week that will change that to more like 50%. This amazes me. A year ago, it was 91%.

Total wow.

Dear Sue,

This morning, I saw your boyfriend. He was wearing one of those fake leather jackets, worn open, with his work uniform unkempt and unbuttoned underneath, showing his wrinkly t-shirt. He was chinless and balding. He could be Santa with the right beard. Of course, I have always seen your boyfriends outside of java joints and there he was outside of Joe's this morning looking like you'd already ravaged him.

I got a double mocha this morning and while I was standing waiting for my coffee from the latest example of bohemian 18-22 year olds in the area -- the flaming gay man with the black curly hair just got me off on this brain tangent, remembering the boytoy we hooked Eric up with, who you wanted so badly to be straight because damn, he was cute! You were shattered when I talked to him and discovered what I believed all along, that he was very very homosexual.

I wonder how things turned out for him...if he avoided contracting AIDS because he was kind of slutty and not always careful. I sure as hell hope so. I remember talking to Eric a year or two back and hearing that a couple he'd known and introduced me to, were both dying from AIDS -- Baby was one of the names and then I remembered Dan Foster, the guy next door who did die from AIDS and how he let us be part of his life and his death. I'll never forget as long as I live how he cried when I hugged him because everyone had been afraid to touch him and I wasn't afraid and it had been so long since he'd been touched that he burst into tears. I remember when he came to my poetry reading and that you'd given me the "fuck me now" black dress, so I could be a bit Bohemian because afterall it was a poetry reading in a coffee shop. He'd been able to sit through my reading and we sat through a few more and he just couldn't hack it any more because it hurt for him to be up for too long. I remember offering to share a soda with him and him freaking out that he might give me his disease through saliva because the research was so sketchy still and he didn't want to take any chances and how sobering that felt.

Remember Mr. Kennedy whose poetry was all about fucking his girlfriend and was so hideous that we had to stifle laughter as he screamed it? I still have the limericks we wrote that made fun of him in one of my books.

I will never forget how we found out about Dan. He simply wasn't at the halfway house any more. We weren't family, so they wouldn't tell us anything other than Dan wasn't there to visit. We checked the hospital and he wasn't there either. We both knew he'd gone.

Sometimes, being an adult is hard. I feel odd walking into my java shop in my suit and hose. I want to scream at all those kids dressed in black with purple hair reading poetry,"This isn't really me! I am just as Bohemian as you!" Then, I add sarcastically,"Yeah, and look how I turned out. Married to an engineer, two kids, and a suit job." I have a hard time reconciling my old life with my new life, as the married computer nerd domestic goddess meets the Bohemian poetry writing political activist ex-prostitute.

Anyway, I saw your boyfriend today and thought of you over mocha.

Love,
RN Ruby

Overall, Thanksgiving went well, though the kitchen didn't actually regain pristine levels of cleanliness til about 10PM last night. We still have a few small loads of laundry to finish, but hey, we're getting there.

I did get the house Christmas decorated. I got lights strung outside. I just put the usual icicle lights across the front and I have this cool angel which I really dig, which also got hung. It looked pretty cool, actually. I've got two light up candles in the window -- just plain clear lights, and the tree of course.

On Friday, Mike went with LaDawn's husband to get firewood. I had jokingly mentioned he should get a Christmas tree while he was out there and then told him, no, nevermind, I'd get one at a grocery store for $20, after remembering last year'sfiasco. He brought home a 12 foot tree. I reminded him that we only have a 7.5 foot ceiling. He said he'd chainsaw it down to size. On Saturday, when he finally brought in what was left of our Christmas tree, I suggested that he take it back outside and I'd go buy one as I had originally planned. He said,"But it's a Charlie Brown tree and we shouldn't fall victim to blatant commericialism." I said,"That's not a Charlie Brown tree, that's firewood. It has no bottom, honey and at this point, only one-third of a front." He tried to tell me that the branches would relax and it would fill out. I gave him that "you've got to be freakin' kidding me look" and got in the car and drove to Raleys, where I bought a nice bushy tree for $24.99.

I have decorated many Charlie Brown trees. I'm good at it. I've spent years broker than hell, so I'm the Queen of the Bargain Christmas Tree, but this was beyond repair and there was no amount of decorating that would have brought it back from the abyss. We're talking about one good branch, here folks. We spent Saturday evening with Genny breaking lots of glass ornaments, decorating the store-bought tree. It was Sunday, before Mike admitted that indeed he'd butchered the tree and that the store-bought one was really nice.

Yesterday, our last day before returning to work and school and the same old routine, we went to the cheapy breakfast place -- 99 cents for eggs, toast, hash browns, and bacon. We walked across the street to the ice rink and rented skates. Mike decided after making it about 20 feet hugging the wall that he was too fat, tall, and old to learn to skate. I was in agony with the figure skates that squished my feet, so I asked a woman wearing hockey skate if she liked them and traded my figure skates in for hockey skates and did a lot better. It's not quite like riding a bicycle, but after a few rounds, I got more steady on my skates and had fun. Genny really couldn't hack the whole skate thing and Mike and I were unsteady enough to not really be able to help her much. I tried to skate a little bit with her, but that was when I had the figure skates and the pain was unbearable, so next time we're going to buy her those adjustable strap on skates for kiddies and let her hang with momma that way. I just don't skate well with a 35 lb weight around my knees, regardless of skates, and honestly, I was terrified that I'd fall on her and kill us both. The mercy was that a woman who was really good on her skates, grabbed Genny and let her piddle around on the ice and took her on little "rides" and Genny loved that. We'd tried hanging over the side and taking her up and down, but she really loved the rides. Russell did pretty well on his own, once he got past the initial bitching, and he made several circuits of the rink.

Then we braved the mall, which was a bit crowded, but not bad. I had to go to the body shop and get some shampoo and while I was there, I picked up presents for folks. That's kitty corner from the Disney Store, so of course, I went there, too. We ate lunch and headed home.

Truthfully, I could have stayed out longer, but that's only because of my escapism. While Grammy and Pop were here for Thanksgiving, the parole date for Mike's dad was mentioned. He'll be out in 10 days from today. No hearing, he'll just be released. We've already discussed that we'll start locking the house, something we've never done where we live because we're out in the middle of nowhere and everyone knows everyone. We're also going to have to inform daycare and Mike's employer, so that no information inadvertently gets released. We've been very careful whenever we've been up by his grandparents not to use my last name for anything. We've either paid with Mike's credit card or with cash.

They are going to limit what county he can reside in, and we're hoping that he'll actually stay there, but that's only for 2.5 years. He could learn a lot about us in the interim. He may even learn that he's got grandchildren and that's what we fear most.